Friday, January 12, 2018

Haitians do jobs many Dominican Republic natives don't want, often for lower wages. Dominican Republic asks Haitians to register and provide signed work permits from employers. Critics say this targets dark skinned people and is racist-NY Times, 6/16/2015

Undocumented workers in the Dominican Republichad until Wednesday to register their presence in the country, in the hope of being allowed to stay.

The
government says nearly 240,000 migrant workers born outside the
Dominican Republic have started the registration process. But there are
an estimated 524,000 foreign-born migrant workers in the country— about
90 percent of whom are Haitian,according to a 2012 survey — leaving a huge population of migrants at risk of deportation.

Human
rights groups had hoped the government would delay the registration
deadline, given the difficulties faced by many in producing documents
and satisfying bureaucratic requirements. But there were no indications
that the authorities would stall their plan to begin ejecting workers.

“The
signals are clear,” said Beneco Enecia, the director of Cedeso, a
nonprofit group that works with migrants and Dominicans of Haitian
descent. “The Dominican government is setting up logistics, placing
vehicles and personnel to start the process of repatriation.”

Dominican officials have long said they have borne the brunt of Haiti’s
economic troubles, both before and after the 2010 earthquake that
devastated their neighbor and sent a stream of people fleeing across the
border.

The tensions peaked in
2013 when a constitutional courtmoved to strip the citizenship of
children born to Haitian immigrants in the Dominican Republic as far
back as 1929. Many of the people affected by the ruling had lived their
whole lives in the Dominican Republic and knew nothing of Haiti, not even the language.

An international outcry prompted the government to soften its stance
somewhat with a law the next year. It promised citizenship to children
whose births were in the nation’s civil registry, and a chance at
nationalization for those not formally registered.

Advocates
and international legal bodies said it still fell short. Anything less
than full citizenship left these people stateless, belonging neither to
their birthplace nor to their family’s homeland, they argued. But that
group does not appear to be the target of the deportations, at least not
directly.

Andrés
Navarro García, the Dominican minister of foreign relations, told
reporters on a trip to Spain that a majority of those subject to
deportation had already started the registration process and would not
be deported.

For
those who do not enter the process, Mr. Navarro said, there will be no
mass roundups to deport people. Instead, the government will handle
cases individually and work in conjunction with the Haitian government
for an orderly transfer of citizens.

The
migrant workers who have registered so far have been granted a 45-day
grace period during which they can complete the process. Migrants are
expected to produce signed work permits from employers, who can be
reluctant to provide such documentation.

The
deportations, which could begin in the coming days, have generated a
more muted response from other countries than the uproar stirred by the
2013 court ruling, which essentially ordered the mass denationalization
of as many as 200,000 Dominican-born children. One reason for the
relative diplomatic silence, including from the United States, is the
troubled relationship many countries have with migrant workers who enter
their borders illegallyseeking employment, advocates argued.

“Migrant
deportation is something states don’t want to get into because they
themselves want to continue to do such deportations,” said Liliana
Gamboa, who coordinates an anti-discrimination projectfor the Open
Society Foundations in the Dominican Republic. “I don’t know how much
pushback there can be from other states.”

Still,
to the extent that deportations occur on a large scale, there is a fear
that they will ensnare people who are trying to comply with the law —
whether they are children born in the Dominican Republic to migrant
workers, or migrant workers who are trying to satisfy the paperwork
requirements.

Some
advocates worry that the mechanism to identify potential deportees will
be to target any dark-skinned people suspected of being of Haitian
descent, whether they have papers or not.

“There
are no adequate screening mechanisms,” said Angelita K. Baeyens, the
programs director at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human
Rights.

Efforts
to process children born in the Dominican Republic whose parents never
formally registered them have fallen short. Fewer than 9,000 of an
estimated population of tens of thousands have registered themselves as
foreigners, as required by the law, a process that in theory puts them
on a path to naturalization.

The status of these children is unclear, potentially leaving them vulnerable to deportation as well.

“If
these massive deportations occur, will they include by mistake people
who were born in the Dominican Republic?” Ms. Gamboa asked. “Will they
follow the standards of international law? Will Haiti be able to receive
this number of deportees? And what would their status be in Haiti?”

Others
have raised questions about the impact on the Dominican economy. For
generations,Haitians have assumed the jobs that many Dominicans do not
want, filling a vital part of the labor market, often at below-market
rates. Production costs could rise, some experts say, if a large chunk
of the labor force is removed.

But that remains a distant threat. For now, activists like Mr. Enecia of Cedeso say many are resigned to their deportation.

"The spread of deforestation, land degradation and erosion across the
border is the surest sign yet that Haiti's ecology is being pushed to
its limits.

"The incursions into Dominican territory are creating
pressure," said Max Antoine, director of Haiti's border development
commission. "The Haitians are creating pressure on their land, creating
pressure on their economic space. ... It's a competition between the
Haitians and the Dominicans."

Haiti has lost 98 percent of its
forests to destructive land use, mainly from the clear-cutting of trees
for charcoal production. As vegetation disappears from Haiti, an illegal
market for charcoal from the Dominican side is exploding.

The
Dominican Republic long ago banned the production of charcoal to protect
its forests and began subsidizing propane to wean its population from
fuel wood. But that has not stopped desperate Haitians from risking
their lives for more charcoal, which provides more than 60 percent of
their nation's energy."...